About This Game

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution is a top down action shooter with old school spirit. It marks the return of top-down shooters with new twists. The game has score oriented competitive gameplay, and is designed for people who like fast paced action, hordes of smart enemies, destructible worlds and ground shaking explosions.
The events take place in an alternative universe where you control an advanced hovertank, packed with the most advanced and sophisticated weapons. Your task is simple, but nevertheless not trivial. In the fight against extraterrestrial invaders, you must prevail!

Key features:

Enjoy fast paced and streamlined gameplay

Engage in online warfare with up to 16 players in any of the multi-player modes

Pave your way to victory with the burning remains of your enemies through 25 different missions

Complete Challenges and unlock First-Person camera mode

Create new missions or modify existing ones using the unique real-time collaborative mission editor and share them with the world

It's nice, now and then, to high-five top-down shooters with an old-school spirit, especially ones that promise 'hordes of smart enemies', 'destructible worlds', and the under-rated added bonus of 'ground-shaking explosions'.The bizarrely named Kot In Action Creative Artel evidently believes that Steel Storm shouldn't merely ape the endlessly scrolling Xevious style, and instead puts a more exploratory, objective-based spin on the shooting.What follows is somewhat less thrilling, sadly. After bursting through the traps all guns blazing with its explosive scenery and intricate art style, the game quickly settles into a numbing monotony where the incessant rattle of gunfire begins to bore through your skull.Apart from having to destroy anything in range, level objectives tend to have you moving backwards and forwards between two places, disabling force-fields and accessing new areas to take down specific installations.But the one-note nature of the single-player quickly proves to be the game's undoing. One level blurs into the next and the repetition grinds you down. Additional weapons and new enemies help, but it's not enough to save a game that lacks a creative spark and the necessary variety to spur you on. Overall 4/10.

Get swarmed by enemies -> Back up to a safe distance -> Shoot -> Repeat. I wish I could say more for Steel Storm. I really wanted to like it and I feel like it has a lot of potential. But it just lacks the elements necessary to keep players coming back for more.

July 18, 2015I genuinely forgot about Steel Storm until the trading card update. The 90 minutes I played some years ago wasn't impressive. And coming back to it today, the game is shockingly familiar. The single-player campaign is the same, no improvements or changes stuck out.

Unfortunately, that campaign is pretty boring. I played a few more missions this time, but according to the only Steam guide on the game, I've seen almost every enemy except the final boss in just a few missions. The levels are bland, focused heavily on backtracking and trap sections. The AI is nothing impressive, even for 2011 standards, with most enemies being simple to fight. The only challenge of the game is the approach of traps and spawns. Even though these traps quickly become predictable, you can still be quickly overwhelmed as enemies spawn in all directions. Basic enemies can be threatening, and I've lost 100% of my health to a salvo of rockets I couldn't avoid. Due to this, the best approach is to exploit corners and weapons so enemies can't get a clear shot. Going toe-to-toe with hitscan enemies is a fight you can't win, so the strongest approach is to kill them blindly.

Pretty simply, the game is very underwhelming. It feels mediocre for a shooter, especially at the price point. Maybe multiplayer is better, but the community is not very active. Steel Storm doesn't really do anything special or noteworthy, and really isn't a game worth remembering.

This game has been in development for many years and boy, does it show (in a good way!). It SHINES with polish and the excellence and bug-free experience ANY game can have with sufficient, dedicated development time constructively spent by active developers on working out the kinks, improving and optimizing the graphics, ramping up the coolness factor of the bullet streams, increasing the enemies' intelligence and their pathfinding and tactics, increasing the detail of the textures and improving the lighting and gameplay and...

...well, Steel Storm: Burning Retribution (SSBR) has been through the equivalent of many "early access" development cycles without having used early access time.

I believe I first downloaded it on Sourceforge long ago when it was available for Linux and Windows (however, my memory might be lying to me. If I were British, I might have the audacity (the word, not the software... see the connection I made to where Steel Storm: Burning Retribution might have started? Har.) to suggest that my memory might be telling me porkies.) I learned that "telling porkies" phrase on a German<->English dictionary site and thought it sounded rather amusing at the time when playing it through various online text-to-speech engines. But I digress. With digression, even.

Back to the point: SSBR is a polished, satisfying game. You might find yourself spending more time playing SSBR than you anticipate.

And that's just the single-player part. I haven't even delved into the multiplayer portion of the game with its collection of multiplayer variants (Edit: I have learned that the number of gamers playing SSBR in multiplayer mode is not as large as might be desired—for whatever reason—and more development time has been spent on making SSBR friendly to single players as a result). SSBR is like Unreal Tournament or Quake with modern graphics and mechs and hovertanks instead of humanoids. And limited, rather than infinite, respawns. And double kills, triple kills, quadruple kills, etc. And a LOT of weapons.

The View From Above Provides A Great Starting Point:SSBR is, by default, played while viewing your HoverTank from a top-down, third-person perspective. There's an automap in the corner and a larger toggleable map, but don't give up on it if that's not your cup of tea: the main camera can be positioned anywhere you want near your character (unless the camera options have been altered; I remember on an old build using a primary camera a little above and behind my vehicle with other buttons bound to cameras looking in forward/back/left/right/etc. directions from the POV of my vehicle. I remember lots of clipping errors in that build from many years ago, which was probably using a different engine.) When I played it today (the day I wrote the rough draft of this review, 2015-07-07), I noticed no clipping errors at all. Two camera options are available to choose as defaults, but individual features (e.g. speed of camera movement, camera response delay following your having turned or moved your vehicle, angle of camera relative to ground, angle relative to the vehicle, angle relative to a fixed base, etc.)) within those options can be changed, etc.

I don't know if the multiple access-anytime camera angles are possible in the current build, but it would not surprise me. If you like games with lots of options to play with, SSBR can probably help to satisfy you.

If you like playing HoverTank DM/CTF/etc. or the much larger than I remember single-player tutorial and campaign(s), this game is different enough and contains enough similar and different features that it's an enjoyable experience.

By default, SSBR's controls are mapped to keyboard, joystick, X360pad, and mouse. The mappings can be changed at will from the main menu or the in-game pause menu.

Blowing Stuff To Smithereens a Visceral Thrill; Finding Goodies After Smoke Clears:The detailed and varying barrels and crates and bins and boxes and scenery are gloriously destructible. Unless it's a legitimate barrier (for which you will be grateful after you learn they can provide good cover from behind which to snipe turrets and other baddies), it can be destroyed... and what will the destruction leave in its wake? Repair parts to give you more health? An additional vehicle respawn ("life")? A new weapon? or a huge number of parts exploding all over the place, adding only to your score? The number of 'gibs' an exploding item releases can be set to preference.

SSBR now has trading cards!

Multiplayer can be co-op or competitive

Runs on all Steam-supported OSs

SSBR comes with an integrated editor, allowing the player to create new levels or campaigns

I can't say the game is bad, i enjoyed it at the beginning, but hell yeah, the camera is so annoying, you are literally getting ♥♥♥♥♥ by ennemies which are out of what you can see. You only have 3 lifes per level, so losing one is a pain in the ♥♥♥, so as long as you can't see what's in front of you....

Another big flaw is that the game often relies on the same tricks, with ennemies spawning on your back when you are using a key or loading datas...